I invite you to turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 3 for the text for Pastor John's sermon

will be taking from verses 18 to 23 of 1st Corinthians chapter 3.

Let no one deceive himself.

If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God, for it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness.

And again, the Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.

So let no one boast of men, for all things are yours, whether Paul

or Apollis or Cepis, or the world or life or death or the present or the future.

All are yours and you are Christ and Christ is God's.

One of the many things that continually deepens my confidence in the Bible as God's word is the ability of scripture to lay bare the complexities of my heart. The psychological wisdom of the word of God is inexhaustible.

And today's text is an example of Paul's insight. I hope you'll see before we're done

into the complex seemingly contradictory

workings of the human heart, mine and yours. Now here we are at the end of

this series on 1st Corinthians 1 to 3.

And if I were to give you a quiz right now and say, fill in the blank,

the main problem at Corinth that Paul has been struggling to conquer or overcome, you would say blank.

And I think we would all say, I hope, boasting or pride, boasting in men in particular,

people. We saw it first in chapter 1, verse 12. I belong to Paul. I belong to Apollo, I belong to Apollo's 12 I belong to Paul I belong to Apollo's I belong to Cepas

these people lining up behind their favorite teachers and boasting as though that

teacher were the best teacher then we saw it denounced in verse 29 of chapter one that no human being might boast before God.

Then we saw two verses later in verse 31 of chapter one the positive statement let him who boasts

boast in the Lord and then we saw in chapter 3 verse 4 Paul picked it up again

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